


Unbound (Hekatah)

by scribdyke



Category: Elder Scrolls, Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-30
Updated: 2020-05-30
Packaged: 2021-03-03 06:00:23
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,020
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24460105
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/scribdyke/pseuds/scribdyke
Summary: A draft for the experience of my Telvanni Dunmer in Helgen after being mistakenly captured in an Imperial ambush. Not entirely canonical to her story, but worth posting anyway.
Kudos: 2





	Unbound (Hekatah)

The first thing that the young Dunmer noticed was the throbbing in her head, and the way that the light working its way through her eyelids was making that throbbing worse. The second thing she noticed was that she was in motion. And the third was that her hands were pressed together and bound behind her back far too tightly, with cheap rope cutting into her dark gray skin. 

Slowly, and with a slight groan, she opened her eyes. The sunlight, although blocked in part by the trees, only made her head hurt more, and she wondered if she had a concussion. Beneath her, the shoddy wooden bench of the cart she had been placed on pricked her cheeks. 

“Hey, you.” Across from her, someone nudged her side with his foot. She raised her head and saw the slightly blurry form of a blonde Nord with his hands also bound, although his were bound in front of him. “You’re finally awake.”

“Ow…” She sat up halfway with some amount of effort, dazed and confused, blinking slowly, and then what had happened came flooding back, and rage and fear ignited in her again. “Those fucking s’wits- they attacked me! The goddamn Imperials attacked me! Do they have a death wish??”

“You were trying to cross the border, right? Walked right into that Imperial ambush…”

“It’s not me they want!” she exclaimed. Her own voice made her temples pulsate with pain, but the panic rising in her heart overtook it. “They don’t want to hurt me- they can’t!”

“It looks like they already have, Dark Elf. It wasn’t just you, though. They ambushed us, too, and that thief over there.”

“They can’t do more! It’s impossible! Not if they don’t want…” She trailed off, and pushed herself into a fully upright position. “They’re gonna start a war if they kill me!”

“You there!” A ragged man next to the blonde Nord gestured at her. “You and me, we shouldn’t be here! It’s these Stormcloaks the Empire wants!”

“We’re all brothers and sisters in binds now, thief.”

“You don’t get it! Either of you!” The Dunmer burst out. “It’s not about- the Empire can’t kill me! They can’t!”

The soldier driving the cart turned over his shoulder. “Shut up back there!”

There was a beat of silence, and then the man that had been addressed as a thief kicked at a fourth person in the cart, a burly, dirty blonde Nord man who, unlike the rest, had a gag in his mouth. 

“Alright, so she’s hysterical. And what’s wrong with him, huh?”

The first Nord’s lip curled. “Watch your tongue. You're speaking to Ulfric Stormcloak, the true High King."

The thief’s eyes went wide, and the Elf felt a profound sense of being an outsider. "Ulfric? The Jarl of Windhelm? You're the leader of the rebellion. But if they've captured you...oh gods, where are they taking us?"

“Rebels?” she cried. “You’re rebels?! Against the Empire? Are you insane?”

“Shut up, Elf. The Empire has held us down long enough.”

“Don’t tell me to shut up! I’m from Morrowind! I know more than you! I know what the Empire does to its provinces and I know what the Empire does to rebels!” Her heart pounded in her ears. “You’re- you’re just soldiers, you never stood a chance! Not when even...don’t you understand? The Empire killed the Nerevarine for rebelling. The Nerevarine! The most powerful mortal mage alive at the time! Who saved Morrowind from gods! They killed her, and you’re just normal Men! You have no chance!”

The blonde Nord listened to her with an unbothered expression. 

“Sovngarde awaits, then,” he said simply.

Sovngarde...she knew little of the Nords, having been born and raised in Morrowind, and then living on the run in Cyrodiil, but Sovngarde was a name she had heard before...the hall of the dead in Nordic religion. 

"No, this can't be happening,” the thief’s breath hitched in his throat. “This isn't happening."

“They’re going to kill us!” Her words were shrill and rang in her head. “But- but they can’t! I haven’t done anything! I’ve not committed a crime! I’m innocent!”

She was ignored. 

“Hey, what village are you from, horse thief?"

"Why do you care?" snapped the thief. 

The rebel answered solemnly. “A Nord's last thoughts should be of home.”

"Rorikstead,” said the thief, shakily, after a moment of hesitation. “I'm...I'm from Rorikstead."

“And what about you, Dark Elf? Where in Morrowind are you from?”

“I lived with the Telvanni! I- I lived with Archmagister Aryon…me grandfather...we had a small town outside our tower…mostly people from Tel Vos before the Red Year...or their descendants...”

There was no time for further conversation. Massive stone walls rose in the distance, and the carriage driver wasted no time in approaching them. She could have sworn he even made the horse trot faster. 

“General Tullius, sir!” Another name she recognized, and one that she loathed, shouted from the top of the walls. “The headsman is ready!”

“Good,” said the General from the ground. The exhaustion in his voice, as if he was tired of the violence he chose to commit, infuriated her, but with her hands bound behind her, palms pressed together, she could not cast any magic to take him down, and summoning her ancestor spirit to save her would be foolish. Even the Nerevarine’s spirit couldn’t save her from all the Imperial army... “Let’s get this over with.”

“Look at him,” said the blonde Nord with tangible derision. “General Tullius, the Military Governor...and it looks like the Thalmor are with him. Damn Elves, I bet they had something to do with this.”

He sighed deeply, with a mix of nostalgia, defeat and distaste in his voice. “This is Helgen. I used to be sweet on a girl from here. Wonder if Vilod is still making that mead with juniper berries mixed in...funny. When I was a boy, Imperial walls and towers used to make me feel so safe…”

“See, that’s what I was saying! I know more than you! I grew up knowing what the Empire did...what they’ve done...you were fools! And now you’re gonna get me killed...but they can’t, they can’t kill me! They shouldn’t! You don’t get it, ’cause you’re a Nord, but if I die, that’s war! That’s war with the Telvanni!”

The cart stopped, and an Imperial Captain in shining, spotless armour stood to greet her prisoners. At her side was a stocky, ruddy-faced Nord with a quill and paper. 

“Get those prisoners out of the carts! Move it!” she snapped, and forcibly, the young woman was forcefully removed alongside the rebels, horse thief, and a few carts down, another very out of place prisoner that looked to be a Bosmer.

“No! Wait! We’re not rebels!” the thief begged as he was unloaded. 

“Face your death with some courage, thief.”

“You’ve got to tell them! We weren’t with you! This is a mistake!”

“It’s easy for you to say, since you’re the rebels! Tell them, damn it!”

But the rebels ignored their pleas. 

“Step towards the block when we call your name! One at a time!” barked the Captain. 

“Empire loves their damn lists,” muttered Ralof, but the Elf could hardly hear him over the pounding in her skull and the rapid rush of blood roaring in her brain. A blind, all-consuming fear had overtaken her, and it had overtaken the thief as well. When his name was called, he did what she had thought to do: he ran. He ran, and he did not live. Imperial arrows pierced him through cleanly, some passing entirely through his body and fully exiting on the other side, and the Legion left his body in the dirt where it fell. She had known...she had known running wouldn’t work, but seeing it fail so graphically...her mind was racing.

“Anyone else feel like running?” the Captain taunted, and she was met with silence. 

There was something that the young girl she had captured had, something that might save her. But the truth was that it hadn’t saved everyone who had it, and when the man with the list called her forth, she felt like she might collapse as she staggered towards him. 

“Who...are you?” he asked, staring at her like she was some kind of alien. 

The words tumbled out of her busted lips. “Please, you can’t kill me, you don’t want to kill me!”

“Are you looking to die like Lokir?” demanded the Captain.

“No! It’s not like that, I’m not a thief, I’m not a criminal, if you kill me, you’ll die!”

“Just calm down and tell me your name,” the younger man sounded like he was trying to soothe her.

“Hekatah! I’m Hekatah Archundael, I’m the Nerevarine’s granddaughter, the man who raised me is me grandfather, Archmagister Aryon of the Great House Telvanni! You can’t kill me! Please, you have to let me go, he’ll start a war if I die! He’ll come to Skyrim and kill you all! You can’t kill me, you’ll die if you kill me!”

The man with the list did not seem to comprehend her words, but the Captain’s light skin became pure white. “By the Eight.”

Giddiness rose up inside Hekatah. That reaction...could she have been saved? The Nerevarine herself had been killed by the Empire, but her husband’s actions following that...the way he had slain the Blades until the Thalmor slew the rest...his reputation, could that save his granddaughter even if not his wife?

“Captain?”

“You hold on, Hadvar. The General needs to hear this. General!”

Tullius approached. “What’s the hold-up?”

“She says she’s- she says she’s Hekatah Archundael.” 

The Military Governor went as white as his subordinate. “She- she says she’s what?” 

He turned towards her, eyeing her closely, as if she was a Fire Rune he had almost stepped on. “Can you prove it?”

“What?” 

“Can you prove that- that you are Aryon and the Nerevarine’s granddaughter?” He sounded on edge, and she liked that.

“Yes,” she said. “I can summon Lileth as me ancestor guardian. She awoke to protect me in Cyrodiil and I can summon her at will. You’re lucky I didn’t choose to let her out when your damn soldiers were beating me.”

“Then...then do that.”

“Fine then. Grandmother...please...come help me.”

A hush fell over the crowd as her guardian appeared, a brilliantly luminescent Dark Elf woman with extravagant Telvanni clothing, a striking resemblance to her descendant, and a piercing magenta glare. Her hateful eyes settled on General Tullius with vitriolic loathing, and an invisible aura of poison hovered about her. Amongst the Imperial forces, there was a dead, terrified silence, and amongst the Nords, a confused murmur arose. The blonde Nord she had spoken to in the cart muttered something under his breath.

There was an intense moment between the dead woman and the General, and at her sides, Lileth’s fingers quivered as if she was barely holding herself back from attacking. A kind of fear permeated the very essence of Tullius’ features, fear that went far beyond the threat of war with the Telvanni, fear that went far beyond the threat of Lileth’s magical prowess. It was the fear of what he did not know, that Lileth could not speak to anyone but her granddaughter. It was the fear that she would, with an audience as grand as the one bearing witness to Ulfric’s would-be execution, reveal firsthand that she had been killed at the hands of the Empire and her body thrown into the sea, and reveal that she had been killed because she was making key moves to destabilize the Empire and free the province of Morrowind from its exploitation. 

“Alright, I see,” said Tullius with a slight tremor in his voice and sweat appearing on his ashen forehead. “Captain, she’s not a Stormcloak. Please...dismiss Lileth, and I’ll see to it that you’re pardoned.”

As quickly as she had materialized, and with one last toxic glower, Lileth vanished, and the Captain cut Hekatah’s bonds. 

“You’re free to go, Archundael,” said Tullius. “I-I hope not to hear from anyone in Morrowind of this.”

With her life out of imminent danger, the pain of her beating from Imperial soldiers returned to the forefront of Hekatah’s consciousness, and she shook her head slowly, rubbing her wrists where the ropes had cut her deeply. “You won’t...I’m just going to heal up and be on my way, then.”

She was left to her devices as the rest of the prisoners were counted off, and paid little mind to them as she sat down, clutching her head and slowly imbuing the injuries she had been dealt with Restoration. With the hum of the magic replacing the droning in her ears, she almost missed the sound of a distant, echoing roar over the mountains. Almost. 

The sound was new to her, and when she lifted her face towards the source, she saw that it was new to the rest as well. 

“What was that?” asked Hadvar. 

“It’s nothing,” said General Tullius, but he looked uneasy. “Carry on.”

“Yes, General Tullius!” said the Captain and she turned to a young priestess. “Give them their last rites.”

The priestess nodded and stepped forward with her arms raised in worship. “As we commend your souls to Aetherius, blessings of the Eight Divines upon you-”

“For the love of Talos, shut up and let’s get this over with.” One of the Stormcloaks, the only one not watching in numbed silence or staring at the skies, stepped forward towards the executioner’s block and knelt. 

The priestess stared at him with a flush of anger on her cheeks beneath her hood. “As you wish.”

“Come on, I haven’t got all morning!” continued the Stormcloak. Although his head lay on the block, he stared up at the masked headsman with fire in his eyes, as if his death was his final act of rebellion. And as the headsman raised his cruelly shining axe, he said his last words with conviction. “My ancestors are smiling at me, Imperial. Can you say the same?”

But the headsman did not grace him with a reply, instead bringing his blade down on the man’s neck, and severing his head in one single, clean blow to cries of outrage from the rebels and cheers of vindication from the loyal residents of Helgen. The only one who remained silent was a Bosmer with shaggy light green hair and a kind of calm in her gaze that unsettled Hekatah, as if she was truly unbelieving in her own death. And when she was called forward, the accuracy of that perception was made clear. 

“You won’t kill me. I know you won’t,” she said in a rich voice that dripped with arrogance. “It will not happen.”

The Captain opened her mouth to respond, but she was cut off by another roar, this one louder than the first. 

“There it is again! Did you hear that?” Hadvar looked in the direction of the roar. 

“I said, next prisoner!”

The red-faced Nord lowered his head like a dog that had been hit. “To the block, prisoner. Nice and easy.”

The Bosmer complied, but as she made her way to the block she continued her rant. “I won’t die here. You can’t kill me. You tried, and you took my bow and arrows, but you can’t kill me. I’m better than you. I’m better than all of you. I won’t die here.”

And she was right. As she laid her head on the block, a third, final roar came from the clouds and it shook the earth, it shook the towers, the walls, all of Helgen, but as terrible as the roar was, the source was worse, far worse, far, far worse. 

It emerged from the sky: a great, pitch black dragon, its armourlike scales as dark as a starless night, with malicious spikes on its head and the tips of its webbed wings, and bright, evil red eyes that glowed like embers from the Deadlands. It landed on one of the towers, its claws the size of a grown Nord digging into the stone with the ease of a child pressing their foot into mud. 

“WHAT IN OBLIVION IS THAT?!” screamed General Tullius, but Hekatah knew, and she in no way wanted to stick around for it.

Panic broke out. Weapons were drawn, the battlemages charged their spells, and in the crowd of prisoners, one woman cried out, “Dragon!”

Yet even in the chaos, as the imprisoned broke rank and began to flee, the headsman made to execute the Bosmer, and what followed that outlandish action was something that was even more outlandish, and something that solidified Hekatah’s desire to run. 

The dragon opened its great black mouth, lined with ebony teeth curved like scimitars, and flaming meteors began to fall from the sky. One struck the headsman, killing him on impact, and yet even as meteors fell, cutting down soldiers and civilians alike, the Bosmer on the block was unharmed. She rose to her feet with a triumphant grin, and that was the last Hekatah saw of her. 

She turned and ran, leaving behind the Imperials, Stormcloaks, and townsfolk alike to die, not knowing or caring which ones lived and which ones perished, staying as close to the buildings as she could as to not be hit by the falling rocks, until she was finally able to fumble her way out of the gate she had come in through and run into the woods. She ran as fast as she could until her legs burned and her lungs felt like they were paper, and then she ran some more, and finally, she fell, exhausted, but at least far enough away that she was possibly safe. But as she lay there on the forest floor, with no coin, no weapons, an uncertain future and a still-aching head, she could not shake the sensation that things were only going to get much, much worse.


End file.
